Friday, January 14, 2005

The Liberal Media Strikes Again

Why are conservatives still complaining about liberal bias in the media? Is this still an issue? I think not. Case in point: the CBS "memogate" story and the report that the hunt for WMDs in Iraq had ended with no weapons found.

Now, if the media has a liberal bias, what story do you think it would focus on more? Dan Rather and the CBS investigation into George W. Bush's National Guard service (which was based on forged memos), or the WMD story (which was based in part on forged documents)?

Give yourself a point if you guessed "Memogate" at CBS.

Yes, the media was all over CBS and the outcome of the investigation into why the program 60 Minutes II used forged documents in a report on Bush's Guard service.

So, how to test the media reaction to these two stories? Well, I don't have Lexis-Nexis, but I have a similar service called Highbeam Research. While its database of news sources isn't as extensive as Lexis-Nexis, it's pretty close.

With that in mind, I'll do a total of four searches: two searches of "cbs news" and "weapons of mass destruction" through newspaper headlines and stories, and two searches of transcripts. I'll start with the date of Jan. 10 through today, Jan. 14.

So, in both cases, coverage of the CBS news fiasco was three times that of the report that Iraq had no WMDs.

Liberal media bias?

You can test this for yourself via Google News, if you do not have access to Lexis-Nexis or a similar service. Click here for a search for "CBS News," and here for a search for "weapons of mass destruction, covering Jan. 10 - Jan. 14, 2005.